


Sentinal

by Sonora



Series: Reload 'verse [3]
Category: Pacific Rim (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Everybody Lives, Fix-It, M/M, Mission Fic, Multi, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Raleigh Lives
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-04-11
Updated: 2018-05-25
Packaged: 2019-04-21 10:14:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 14,205
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14282718
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sonora/pseuds/Sonora
Summary: Herc had thought they'd done their job well.  That jaeger tech would never be turned against the people of Earth.  But he hadn't counted on Newton Geiszler destroying all his well-laid plans.Yancy, on the other hand, isn't worried about that.  Because he knows, no matter what happens, they'll find a way to stop it.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I sort of liked the movie. Sort of. First half was good. I found a number of things baffling, though. Especially the last half. For a lot of reasons, most of which I am not going to talk about explicitly but will factor into the narrative here. But the whole time I was watching this movie, all I could think was “Herc and Yancy’s paranoia from the Reload ‘verse is sure looking justified." 
> 
> Anyway I’m going to rewrite this ~~yuan grab~~ sequel in that 'verse. I don’t think you need to read the previous two stories to get this one: main concept here, Herc’s class was trying to destroy all the jaeger tech before the war ended, and our boys are all still alive. 
> 
> I’m also going to get Nate and Jake in here too, so don't worry about that. It's not about erasing anybody from the movie, but cleaning up the story and putting a different spin on it. When they get here, I'll update the tags.
> 
> (For anybody who’s just coming into things, please be aware, we have a lot of incest ships in this fandom. Not my fault Del Toro made everyone related in the last film. I don't think this will get explicit but please mind the tags.)
> 
> Title taken from a VNV Nation song. And I still need to write that story about how Chuck is a massive VNV Nation fanboy...

One of the nicest things about New Zealand is the anonymity it gives them.

Herc’s the only one who bothered to apply for New Zealand residency; Australia has some kind of deal, apparently, and nobody was going to say no to the former Marshall of the PPDC. Yancy, on the other hand, had been living off forged papers for so long, he’d gotten the rest of them a pretty good set each. With no way to fake being Kiwis, he’d said, he’d set them up with relatively plausible backgrounds. 

On paper, their little B&B is owned by a pair of Canadian brothers who legally immigrated as teenagers, and one Australian post-doc student. 

On paper, Chuck’s married to Raleigh.

They never really had a ceremony. Their situation isn’t really like that anyway.

Which is why Raleigh always finds it just a little disconcerting when he wakes up in the morning with just the two of them. Without Yancy there. Without Yancy where he goddamn well should be.

“Shit,” he grumbles, sitting up, wanting to make _damn_ sure his brother hadn’t just rolled off to the other side of...

“Oi, what’s wrong?” Chuck asks, cracking a sleep-filled eye.

Raleigh looks down at him, resisting the urge to stroke a stray bit of hair out of his eyes. Yancy might be all about keeping something of a regulation haircut, but lately, Chuck’s been letting his grow out. It’s cute, on a guy who is usually anything but.

“Yancy.”

That gets Chuck’s attention. “What do you mean, _Yancy_?”

“He, uhh,” Raleigh says, and then spots something in the corner of the room.

It’s Yancy’s backpack. 

The one he uses when he goes... wherever the fuck it is he goes. Used to go. Because he promised he’d stop doing that shit to them.

At the same time, though, he can smell coffee, and it’s way too early yet for one of them to be making coffee for the guests. 

Plus, their dogs are missing.

So whatever his brother might be planning, there’s a good possibility he’s still around.

Raleigh sighs, and reaches out for that pair of sweats - whose exactly they are, doesn’t matter - hanging off the footboard of their oversized bed. “Maybe somebody requested early breakfast last night. You know, off on a hiking excursion today or whatever.”

Chuck blinks at him again, still half-asleep. “Need me to come?”

“Naw.”

It gets him a little grunt, and Chuck just rolls over, grabbing groggily for his tablet. Despite that, Raleigh knows from experience Chuck’ll be out again within a minute.

The only early riser out of the three of them is him.

Sweats and last-second t-shirt firmly in place - the scars tend to lead to questions he’d rather not answer - Raleigh pads barefoot down two flights of stairs to the main floor. The dining room is, of course, a guest area, but they didn’t feel like putting a second kitchen in, so they normally keep that closed off. Eat their own meals in the nook. That sort of thing.

The main living spaces, dining room included, are dark, the settings not even put out yet for this morning’s meal. There is light coming out from under the kitchen door, however, and as Raleigh gets closer, he can hear voices.

“... didn’t you talk to him about this?”

“What was I supposed to do? He’s been odd since Pitfall, stopped conversing with me, broke off contact with everybody, everybody. I had thought it was erely the strain of running the environmental clean-up teams out of Shanghai.”

“Hermann, I’m not trying to be an asshole here, but...”

“Yance, don't. There's no excuse for this. Scott died out there. For this shit, that you just let...”

“I didn’t know he’d broken the encryption!”

“And how did he do that? You assured me the maintenance database was deleted.”

“It was.”

“Then how’d he get it?”

“I don’t know. I’m not the man’s keeper!”

“Thought you two had a thing going on.”

“Marshall Hansen, I would thank you not to impl...”

But the last thing Raleigh is going to do is sit out here in the hallway and listen to this bullshit, because seriously. 

He knocks the door open. As loudly and rudely as he can.

“Thought we weren’t running missions anymore,” he declares loudly, letting the door slam behind him. Herc’s half out of his chair, but Yancy’s sinking into his own. Deeper and deeper, guilt in what remains of the ghost drift between them. _Good_ , Raleigh thinks. 

Only Hermann stays still.

Like a deer in the headlights.

“Raleigh,” Yancy says in his most neutral voice, as Raleigh heads over to the coffeemaker. One of their pups - Dewy, the one who spent his puppyhood destroying every chair leg he could get his teeth on - trots over with a squeaky toy. “Couldn’t sleep?”

“This sounds like a mission,” Raleigh repeats, and looks at Herc. “Is that what’s going on? Does Yancy have to go kill people and, like, burn down a couple of factories for you again?”

Herc rubs a hand over his face. He looks wrecked. "Not really the time, Raleigh."

"Yeah, I know. Zero-five-thirty is a little inconvenient," Ralaigh shoots back.

Their former Marshall stares at him for a moment, but it doesn't really hold. “Remember that last op we pulled?" he asks instead. "Tibet?”

Raleigh shrugs. Yancy hadn’t given him full details, but what he’d said was enough. A month of pure hell. “Yeah. Yancy almost lost his feet to frostbite.”

“Raleigh, don’t be a bitch about...” Yancy begins.

But it’s Hermann who cuts him off. “That mission was to prevent the PLAAF from retaining a copy of all of the Jaeger Corps’ technical plans, as I recall.”

Herc just sighs. That long, pained sigh of his that always comes out when he’s done with Chuck’s bullshit.

“Right. And?” Raleigh dumps a spoonful of honey into his coffee. Sips it, add another. “You guys got it back.”

“We got what the Chinese stole. What _they_ stole,” Herc replies, and kicks out a chair from their little breakfast table for Raleigh, gestures him over. “I wasn’t really planning on insider threats from our two-man K-Science department.”

“He didn’t get all of it, of course. Not the research, nor our R&D efforts,” Hermann explains to Raleigh, bravely attempting to ignore the jab. “All he got was what was in the maintainers’ databases. Specs on a half-dozen or so models, the ones that were left. Parts lists, circuitry, that sort of thing.”

“Right, yeah, the maintenance databases didn’t have the full plans, I thought,” Raleigh says, frowning, but sits down. “Right? Are those useful on their own?”

“Hey, anybody check the Internet this morning?” Chuck demands from the doorway, hair sticking out everywhere and shirt most definitely missing. In the gray pre-dawn light, on his pale skin, his circuitry scars might as well be glowing. He looks pissed. “Some wanker posted Striker’s complete armor schematics online, right down to the metallurgy reports from her last rebu...” and he stops as he gets a good look at Gottlieb before looking back to Herc. “The fuck’s going on?”

“Apparently,” Herc replies, with all the dripping sarcasm he can muster, eyes boring a hole in an increasingly fidgety Hermann Gottlieb, “Newt decided that what the world really needs now is loads of open-source jaeger tech.”


	2. Chapter 2

"Where'd Gottlieb get off to?"

Yancy looks up from the sink just in time to see Chuck sauntering over, workout shorts low around his hips and sweat plastering his shirt to his torso.  He doesn’t have quite the muscle that he did back in the day, and lord knows he’s built solid, but right now, he’s edible.  “Good work-out?”

“Eh, stuck to the elliptical so I could get caught up,” he says, and goes for the smaller fridge where they keep their own food to retrieve the orange juice.  “Gottlieb?”

"He and your dad went to Manukau.”

"That's hours away."

"Yeah, apparently they wanted to talk to the local PDDC office.  It doesn't have much of a presence here in New Zealand, but..."

"No shit.  Part of the reason I wanted to come here," Chuck says, and perches on the counter with his juice.  Yancy's never been able to figure out if the kid doesn't understand the point of glasses, or if he does it to annoy them, but he always drinks straight from the carton.  They get him his own now.  "Get away from it, you know?"

"I know the feeling."  Yancy dumps the last of the morning pans in the sink.  The big stuff doesn't fit in their tiny little dishwasher.  "Don't think any of us are going to be able to escape it now."

"I was scrolling through the stuff that got put out."

"Bad news?"

"It's almost everything but the AI code,” Chuck says, and rolls his eyes up to the ceiling.  "What are they going to do?  You can't jockey without that AI."

That AI was critical. Jaegers were too complex to have mechanical control systems; the Mark Is had some drive-by-wire type tech, but Mark IIs and up used a combination of physical body movement, microelectric arrays that read finer muscle contractions, hand signals, and even eye movement and pupil dilation, in addition direct neural feedback. A conventional computer couldn’t process that sort of information fast enough. Without an AI that could analyze, and better yet, infer the commands of the human pilots, a jaeger wouldn’t move.

"I know,” Yancy says.  “It's weird, right?"

“You blokes destroyed everything, didn't you?"

"Thought so."

"So Dad's freaking out about nothing.  They’re going to have to program that shit from scratch,” Chuck says, nodding.  “And everybody’s got it now anyway.  Won’t that mean there’s parity?”

“Parity for whoever can afford it. If they get them working,” Yancy says, and then something hits him.  “Why was it Geiszler?  Why him?  How would he even know how to steal that shit?  He was a biologist right?”

Chuck looks at him. “He wasn’t a slouch with computers.  A lot of what they do requires databases and...”

Yancy holds up his hand.  “Too early for geek talk.  But you’re saying he could do it.”

“Of course.

“Back before, you know, you, uhh, you were working with a company, weren’t you?”

“Oh yeah, before I got hooked on smack and almost died, yeah, yeah I remember that,” Chuck says derisively.  “Great memories.  Shao Industries.  Chinese firm.”

“What do you remember about them?”

“Not a whole lot.”

“They ever ask you to download anything, pass data from the Shatterdome back home?”

Chuck gives him a curious look.  “No.  Why?”

“China used to be notorious for intellectual property theft,” Yancy says, “right up until they got smacked with the threat of economy crushing sanctions by us back in, like, 2018.  So they stopped.  They got sneaky.”

Nodding, Chuck takes another swig from the carton.  “But if everything's free on the Internet, open-source, they can get the info.”

“If that’s the case, the question becomes,” Yancy asks, "what’s Geiszler getting out of it?  What’d they promise him?”

“What difference does it make?  They don’t have the bloody AI.”

But somebody’s going to figure it out, Yancy knows. Lightcap’s still alive and it’s not like computer science research has just stopped the past eight or nine years. Great. All he gave, and they’re back to square one.  "I think I'm going to need to pay a visit to our buddies in Australia.  Make sure nothing got compromised.  Raleigh's gonna love that."

“Maybe it’ll be okay,” Chuck says and slides off the counter. He sets the orange juice down and slots up against Yancy, hands slipping around his waist. “The war’s over. We won. They aren’t coming back.”

“You really believe that?” Yancy whispers.

Chuck pushes up on his toes, close enough that his words brush hot across Yancy’s cheek. “I believe that I could use a shower. You done with this?”

Yancy smiles back at him. 

And maybe splashes some dirty dishwater on him for good measure.

+++++

Part of the deal Herc had helped the Australian government broker, prior to riding off into the sunset to this sleepy little backwater mountain town, was the phase out of the PPDC.  He’s fucking proud of that. Or at least, he was.

Some of the Class of 2015 - Stacker, for starters - had thought the Gages quite mad the first time they brought up the necessity of ensuring jaeger tech didn’t survive the war.  Herc had sided with them almost immediately, as had Scott.  They’d both dealt with the UN prior to the kaijuu showing up; Herc over in Africa on a couple of ops the seppos still won’t admit to, and Scott back when he was working in Canberra in those nice clean suits he used to own.  Neither one of them trusted the UN peacekeeping forces.  Lack of oversight led to abuses; back when it was just human troops, rape and extortion had been almost commonplace.  Herc hadn’t wanted to think about what would happen if they were left with the jaegers.  

Hell, he and Scott had spent almost the entirety of the war making sure that wouldn’t happen.

Argentina, Canada, Japan, India, and a few other countries had pulled financial support for the PPDC in the year following the closure of the Breach.  The United States had pulled out of the UN entirely, following a popular uproar over the Wall of Life and a couple of legitimate threats of civil war.  The goal seemed to be to starve down the organization.  

Australia voted to pull out too.  Last year.  General referendum.  Almost an 70% vote for pull-out.  Herc had spearheaded it.  But Canberra thought they knew better and kept the country in.  Dumb fucks, Herc had thought, and the only thing that had given him any comfort at the time is that the jaegers were gone.  The PPDC was basically just a regional white helmet thing, without those jaegers.  Wasn’t like the US was letting arms sales go down.

Geopolitics being what they are, a vacuum - a significant one - was left by the United States pull-out.  Japan and India had been almost as bad.  The Chinese, now, seem to be stepping in to fill the void and nobody left seems to mind.

Bloody wonderful.

Nothing to do about it now though, it seems.

PPDC’s going nowhere.

Manukau Station, the only PPDC outpost in New Zealand, is barely a blip on the map. Nestled in the shrub grasses of the coast and isolated from the city across the bay, there isn’t even a fence around the place. It’s a collection of maybe half a dozen buildings that ring the main hangar; built for three jaegers, it’s as empty as the rest of the ‘Domes around the base.

It’s easy enough to find the commander’s office.

It’s the only building that has any cars in the parking lot.

And she doesn’t at all seem surprised to see them let themselves into her office

“Marshall Malikova, good to see you, ma’am,” Herc says, walking into her office with only a light tap on the door.

“Oh knock it off with that Marshall bullshit,” the tall Russian-American woman laughs, and shoves her laptop away. “Good to see you.”

Herc gestures at Gottlieb. “Nat, meet Doctor Gottlieb, Gottlieb, this is Natalie Malikova, former left-hand pilot of Vulcan Spectre...”

“Pleasure,” she replies, shaking both their hands before settling back against the cheap laminate surface of a desk that’s at least five years past its prime. The metal fingers of her left prosthetic drum a little on the surface. It reminds Herc of that lab, back in the day, that he asked Yancy to blow up. Where would the world be if they’d just left things alone, if they hadn’t tried to scrub out the jaeger tech? _Probably worse off_ , he tries to tell himself. “I was wondering when you were going to come by. Figured it would be today.

"Nat, I should make it clear I have no intention of being dragged back into this debacle..."

"If you didn't care, you wouldn't be here."  The commander of Auckland's PDDC station fetches a bottle of Johnny Walker from some cabinet on the back wall.  "You wouldn't have gone out of your way to get us all the best deals you could." 

Glasses join the bottle.

Herc’s well aware of Gottlieb’s eyes on him. ”Never did get you that pension,” he says. “Canberra said they weren’t responsible for those of us who weren’t former military.”

She spreads her hands, like she’s going to say something, but pours herself a drink instead. “I still have a paycheck, and Andrew still has medical.  That's what important."

"How's he doing?"

The glass in her hand stops, halfway to her lips. “He's never going to wake up, Herc.  You know that."

"If it hadn't been for you two in Vulcan..."

"Don't give me the line.  We knew what was at stake.  Fuckin' cowards and their fuckin' wall."

Herc had liked the Malikovs.  They'd only been in Sydney for about a year before Pitfall, most of their war spent up in Vladivostok with the Kaidanovskies.  When Vulcan Spectre had gone down in Sydney Harbor, the fast intercept Mark IV ill-equipped to deal with Mutavore's massive bulk, the observed damage to the conn-pod had been so bad that LOCCENT wrote it off as casualty event.  A rescue crew was eventually sent out to retrieve the bodies, only to find Natalie desperately holding her unconscious and bleeding husband barely above the rising tide with her one functioning arm; she'd had to tourniquet the other.  

Probably nothing could have been done.  But six hours out there, in those conditions, hadn't helped. 

They'd had three kids though, and Andrew's family was back here, so Herc had gotten her the transfer.  At the time, he hadn't thought it would last very long.  Maybe a year or two, enough for her to get back on her feet, find a job somewhere.

"You have secure employment now, at least," Gottlieb says.

“Yeah, right?” She snorts.  "Orders came down a few hours ago.  We're building back up. I’m going to get a full maintenance squadron, plus operations support.  They anticipate getting us a jaeger or two by the end of the year."

Herc pours himself a drink.  "That's one or two more than we used to have out here."

"They're worried the kaijuu will come back."

"What do you think?"

“My daughter is excited about getting a chance to pilot now," she says, and shakes her head.  "But this place has never been a target.  Never attacked, not once.  Why does it need a jaeger?"

“Possibly because this isn't about kaijuu control," Gottlieb says bluntly.

Herc glares at him. Malikova just cocks her head, but looks over at Herc too.

"Herc, I don't want to sound like a bitch, but I'm not concerned about what is or isn't going on. New Zealand is fucking sleepy, and my Andrew..."

"I know, Nat.  I know."

"You want me to keep you in the loop, don't you?”

“If you can. I’ll be talking to Hermann, as appropriate.”  

“Of course,” she murmurs. “You gonna take your position back if they offer it to you, Doc?”

Gottlieb shifts a little in his seat. “I don’t know. Do you think they would?”

“You might as well ask,” she tells him. “We’re hiring, I guess. I can get you the application info, if you’d like.”

“Well, it does offer a more direct research role than what I have in my current university job, with all the students constantly demanding my time...”

“I’ll take that as a yes,” she says. “What about you, Herc?”

“I’m done with this shit. I’m almost fifty. Time to let you young’uns handle this.” He shrugs.  “But Chuck may want to come down sometimes, play with the toys."

She smiles.  "He always was good with that.  I'd hoped he'd get a chance to do something with all that talent he had, after the war."

"He's alive.  That's what I care about."

"I know the feeling."

+++++

Yancy had never given much thought to what he was going to do after the Kaiju War. Just hadn’t been something he’d considered much of a possibility.

Even with the last year or two of practice, just being _still_ is difficult.

He reads the news a little more than is healthy.

The Shatterdomes start go back up - this time, primarily in the western Pacific, areas the Chinese control or have been trying to control for a long time. The primary, best, most expensive contracts go to Chinese companies.  Shao Industries, most notably.

Which only means something because Geiszler gets a job there. Yancy makes some quiet inquiries through Hannibal Chau. Finds out the pencil-necked, kaijuu-tatted geek is making a seven figure salary. Good for him. Arms dealing always was a profitable field. 

But it’s not their problem now. Not their fight. They did their part, saved the world, closed the Breach.

The one thing he does is take that trip to Oz. Nothing’s been compromised. Their last-ditch database is secure, the uplink frequency still a secret, the codes burned into memory but written down nowhere.  
Other than that, Yancy stays in observation mode, and tries not to get too wrapped up in things.

Raleigh seems to be adjusting to the quiet the best out of all of them. He’s changed a lot, even from a few years ago. That cockiness in him is bone-deep, but it’s tempered now. Less arrogant, slower to come. He still knows how to turn on the charm, which is one reason why they’re fully booked during the ski season and get plenty of repeat customers over the years. The middle-aged ladies love him. He’s still not great at cooking, so Yancy handles that end of the business, but Raleigh excels at all that customer-facing stuff.

Chuck stays up on the news, and occasionally goes down to Maunkau to help them get their maintenance bays in order.  Most of the new hires don't recognize him, and the ones that do don't make a big deal out of it. The PPDC pays him, but it’s not his name on the paychecks - Marshall Malikova does them that little favor - so Yancy has to set up another round of bank accounts to stash the money. Not that Chuck leaves it there.  He spends most of his consulting fees on his personal workshop; there's a design competition announced for rudimentary control programs, and when a hundred grand of networking equipment show up on their doorstep about a week later, Yancy doesn't even question it.

They've got plenty of money. 

If Chuck wants to show up MIT and Google's specially funded teams by spending three weeks straight doing nothing but programming a piece of code that translates a pilot's foot and leg motions into the central motion processors without the added benefit of the lower treads for physical input, well, that’s his business.

"Why bother?" Yancy asks him about halfway through that particular little project.

"Because back doors are a beautiful thing," Chuck replies.

He figures it out before the university teams do.

He also releases the code online.

Because, he says, that's just fair.  _What good is your homemade jaeger if you can't move it?_

What good indeed.

What good is any of this shit going to do, Yancy wonders sometimes. The new jaeger designs are released with great fanfare, but they don’t look right. Lighter, less substantial. Built for speed and agility, the PPDC says, but Yancy knows from experience that sometimes speed doesn’t count for shit. 

But things don’t get weird, not noticeably, not for a while, not until Herc comes over one afternoon with an official-looking envelop in his hand.

"Launch party in Hong Kong," he says unceremoniously, handing Raleigh the invitation.  “You’re going with me.”

“Why?”

“Because out of the three of you, you’re the only one who can talk some sense into that damn co-pilot of yours.”

“Wait, what’s Mako got to do with any of this?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hooray for family drama, I swear...


	3. Chapter 3

“I look like a cancer patient.”

“You look fine.”

“Yeah, you say that now,” Raleigh grumbles, trying to get his bowtie fixed, concentrated on the reflection in the hotel mirror. It’s been a long time since he’s worn a bowtie, and it feels odd to have on black instead of blue.  He’s not PPDC any more, though, and this isn’t mess dress.  It’s not a comfortable feeling.

None of this is comfortable.

“If you didn’t want to shave your head, maybe you shouldn’t have been fucking around in Chuck’s workshop,” Herc replies mildly.

Raleigh sighs, a rubs a hand across his mostly bare scalp.  Yeah, Chuck’s workshop.  The kid’s been messing around with some of the tech specs on the new jaegers.  Stuff’s getting classified and locked down and stuffed behind company patents faster than a Cat V in open water, but Chuck’s got that connection with the Manukau ‘Dome now, and he’s been gleefully exploiting it.  The new Drift system has some odd components, including some kind of liquid hydraulic system that doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.

Petroleum-based and sticky as hell.

When Raleigh had dragged his ass back to the house, Yancy had laughed his ass off, and then gone to get the clippers.

“So what did you want me to tell Mako again?” Raleigh asks weakly, trying to change the subject.  

“Didn’t ask you to talk to Mako about anything.”

This hair thing is a massive problem.  There are most certainly going to be paparazzi here tonight and he hasn’t been seen in a while.  Either they’ll have no interest in him at all, or he’ll be all over the international tabloids this time tomorrow.  He’s not sure which is worse.  “You want me to talk to her.  I know you do.”

“Didn’t ask anything, mate.”

“If she’s here, and she’s throwing her weight behind this, it’s because...” and Raleigh has to break off, coughing into his sleeve.

So maybe he swallowed some of that stuff too.  

The cough - this irritating, painful, full-body cough - will not go away.

Herc sighs and steps out of the room.  “I didn’t ask you to say anything to her!” he calls back.

Raleigh tries to answer, but his body just will not respond.  Nearly doubled over from the thick, full-body wracking coughs, he braces himself up on the bathroom counter.

An open water bottle is pressed into his free hand, and Herc pulls him up.  “You are the worst gay man I’ve ever met,” he chides, smiling a little.  “Always thought it came with some fashion sense.”

Raleigh smiles weakly, wiping his eyes as he takes a drink of water.  “I’m bi,” he croaks, and takes another sip.  “Remember Naomi?”

Herc actually rolls his eyes.  “Right.”

“What, I can’t be bi?”

“If you’re bi, there’s the possibility you might leave my son for some sheila, and then I’d have to kill you,” Herc says serenely, looping the annoying bits of satin through themselves.   “You planning on leaving my boy?”

And right, like that deserves any kind of response.  “You know, for a guy who says he’s not into guys, you’re freakishly good at this,” Raliegh says instead, watching Herc tie his tie for him.

His sort-of father-in-law  yanks the bow tie into its final position a little harder than he needs to.  “Scott never could get it right.  Always had to do it for him.”

“Sure.”

“But he was straight.  So he had that excuse.” 

“According to Yancy, Scott was definitely not straight.”

“As straight as any of us in the Corps could be.”  Herc steps back, eyes sweeping down.  “You look good.”

Raleigh shrugs.  “Yancy’d be pissed if I went out there and embarrassed us.”

Herc just grunts, and goes back for his drink.  His tux is impeccable, and a sharp contrast from his usual worn-out jeans and ancient henley collection.  It’s easy to forget out in the mountains that Herc’s career military, former Marshall himself; Raleigh finds himself almost envious of the older man’s ability to turn it on.

For himself, Raleigh doesn’t really want to be here.  Not alone anyway, not without Yancy or Chuck.  But Yancy likes being dead, and Chuck’s been surprisingly reticent about appearing in public since the drug problem.  Sure, there’s Herc, but Herc’s the guy who kept Yancy away from him for years; the guy who almost got Yancy killed more than once.

Raleigh hasn’t been sure how to feel about Herc for a long, long time.

“Come on now, you’ve done this shit before.  Shake a few hands, smile, talk to people but don’t say anything...”

Raleigh checks himself in the mirror.  His eyes are a little red from that stupid coughing fit, but that’ll go away.  “Nobody’s ever asked me to run a con on my drift partner at one of these things before.”

“Look,” Herc says, and gestures Raleigh back out into the main shared room of their very nice suite, “we’re here for one reason, and one reason only, and that’s to be seen, not in uniform.  Fucking message to everyone.  Plus, there are a few of these cunts I need to talk to directly.”

“You want me to talk to Mako,” Raleigh repeats.  “What, you want to pull her into your bullshit?  Tell her about...”

Draining the tumbler, Herc sets the cut crystal back down and goes for his shoes.  “Stacker never approved of any of it...”

“Jee, I wonder why.”

“...but he didn’t ever stop us.  Not sure how much Mako ever knew about, but she’s gonna have bigger problems now.  Sides, China’s running this shit now.”

Raleigh just looks at him.  “Chuck put a back-door in that code in that contest he won.  Told me all about it. That’s why you’re not worried.  You think you’re going to be able to shut down the jaegers any time you damn well please.”

Herc grins.  “Now why would I think that?  Back door or not, you’d have to hack into the conn-pod. Find the very specific satellite comm-link frequency, hack the encryption...”

“Which Gottlieb is going to help you do, right?”

“The kaijuu aren’t coming back, mate.  You fuckin’ nuked ‘em.  Now let’s go enjoy the party.”

+++++

Raleigh can tell, from the moment they walk in to the old Hong Kong Shatterdome, that Herc isn’t all that impressed with it.

He’s not quite sure how to feel about it himself.

It’s... weird.

Unlike Herc, who was stationed here for a few years with Scott back in the Lucky Seven glory days, Raleigh never lived here.  Not really.  This was a temporary home, uncomfortable, too hot and too cold, the jaegers all gone practically in the first week he showed up.  Their ghosts had lingered in the bays, though; the scent of their engines, their joints, their weaponry seemingly baked into the concrete walls.

Now everything is sleek, restored, clean.  

The International Museum of the Kaiju War.

Apparently, the new main Shatterdome for the new PPDC is going to be built elsewhere.

The UN already have a fresh round of facilities under construction - Shatterdomes, maintenance hubs, manufacturing.  All the proposed new bases are in Chinese territory.  All the companies winning the first round of contracts are either Chinese, or obligated to shift production to China.

Raleigh never gave much concern to the politics at play.  Back in his day, every American in the program had a dual commission in one of the military services, and part of that was an obligation to aggressively avoid political opinions.  Yancy spent five years of his life trying to make sure something like this, this rebirth, this degradation of mission, wouldn’t occur.  And standing here, in the midst of the old bays, with a party swirling all around, it feels wrong.

Raleigh can still remember the celebration party they had here after Pitfall.  Cheap beer and bad music - in honor of the Kaidanovskies, even if nobody admitted to it - and exhaustion underpinning the happy smiles.

What have these people sacrificed?  What do they know about war?

Herc keeps him close for a little while as they work their way out to the main hangar doors, flung open to the late afternoon sky.  Cocktail hour.  

Raleigh loses track of all the people whose hands she has to shake.  Big-name politicians, ambassadors, Shen Industries investors, even a few celebrities.  He doesn’t recognize most of these people, but he doesn’t know if that’s a result of living in the fucking hinterlands of New Zealand, or if nobody here is really as important as they’re all pretending to be.

It’s not exactly unfamiliar territory, though.  These are the sorts of parties and the sort of people he had to deal with back in his piloting days.  Raleigh’s used to plastering on a smile and saying the things they want to hear - small anecdotes, funny little stories, light answers to heavy questions.  Nothing real, nothing honest, but whatever.

He’s here for Mako, he tells himself, and deals with the endless question _what was the Anteverse like?_ by not answering it at all.

His cough gets a little worse out here, irritated by the pollution of the mega city all around them.  He has to break up a few conversations, hacking into a handkerchief the concereige pressed on him as they were waiting for their ride in the lobby of the Park Hyatt.  Nobody asks him about it, but he does notice more than a few camera bulbs going off.

Wonderful, Raleigh thinks, and wishes Chuck was here.  That would be great.  Chuck always was a pro at saying inflammatory and therefore distracting things.  

The demonstration of the new model Mark VI goes off without a hitch.  Scheduled for sunset, intentionally cast against the dramatic neon light of the waking Hong Kong skyline.  It does look impressive, the new jaeger sleek and fast.  Macro robotics have advanced somewhat in the past few years, and the movement is quicker, less jerky, lighter, than even Striker Eureka’s had been.  The pilot team puts her through her paces with what is obviously a practiced routine, right down to a demonstration of the dual chain swords.  

Something about it though doesn’t feel right.  Doesn’t feel real.  Like watching bad computer animation, or something like that.  The fluidity of movement makes the jaeger seem weightless.  

“Wonder how that girl would do up against Yamarashi,” he comments to Herc, who’s leaning against the railing up in the VIP platform with a distant expression in his eyes.  

“We designed the Mark VI specifically to handle enemies both faster and stronger than previously recorded kaijuu,” an elegant young Chinese woman says, coming up beside them.  “This machine is quite capable of taking on a Category Three on its own.”

“On its own?” Raleigh asks, turning around to face her.  “Lady, don’t take this the wrong way, but solo deployment tactics are why we really started racking up the body count towards the end of the war.”

“We have improved upon the original design,” she says, words clipped.  “Lighter, more agile...”

Herc grunts, still watching the demonstration.  “Speed counts for jack shit when you have a three thousand ton monster going for your head,” he says.  “Or when one deploys its onboard EMP.”

The woman’s expression doesn’t change, but her cheeks do start to go red.  “Coming from the man who gutted the PPDC when we needed it most, I do not...”

“When we needed it most?” Herc repeats in one of those dangerously blasé tones of his.  “When we needed it most was back in fucking 2024, but I seem to remember it being your government that vetoed that Security Council resolution to refund the program for another year.  What happened, companies like your family’s not get enough kick-backs?”

Raleigh can practically see the explosion starting, deep down in her dark eyes, but before she gets a chance to say anything, there’s Newton Geiszler.

Newton Geiszler himself.  In a proper three piece suit that hides all that kaijuu groupie ink he’s ruined himself with, looking nervous as all hell.  “Uhh, Herc, good to see you.  I’m sure you have a lot of feelings about all this, but I think we can all agree, Romeo Dawn here is an amazing machine.”

“I think we can all agree that Bruce and Trevin would have hated that name.  Probably would have called it gay,” Herc says, and looks at the Chinese woman, who looks somewhere between deflated and pissed ff.  “If you were trying to gain face with the old guard, that’s not going to help your cause.”

“I do not need your approval, Mister Hansen...”

“Which is lovely, because you’re not going to get it, Miss Shen.”

She stares at him for a moment more, and then, making a little disapproving noise in her throat, turns neatly on her four inch heels and strides away.

Out in the harbor, the demonstration appears to be over, the jaeger retracting it’s chain swords and striding back towards the Shatterdome.

“We did design that to take on a Cat V,” Newt says, taking up position next to Raleigh.  “Years of analysis, working through god only knows how many hundreds of simulations of potential kaijuu evolutionary paths...”

“You’re working for Shen Industries?” Herc asks, and it’s about then that Raleigh realizes just who they’d been talking to.

Well.

Shit.

Herc did say he wanted to come here to insult people, right?

“Yup, couple of years now,” Newton replies.  

“Doing what?”

“Bit of everything.”

It’s evasive.  Obnoxious.  And part of Newt’s sleeve rides up, revealing the bit of brightly colored ink.  Kaijuu ink.  

For some reason, that pisses Raleigh off.  

“Must be nice.  Leaking one of our maintenance databases and suddenly landing a job at a top Chinese defense contractor,” Raleigh says, icy, and he can feel the cough coming back up now.  Dammit.  “Almost like you sold us all out, the entire fucking planet, to get yourself a cushy-ass job somewhere.”

“See Raleigh, that was always your problem.  You and the rest of you pilots.  Never could get your head out of the conn-pod long enough to see the bigger picture,” Newt replies.

“The problem,” Raleigh begins, but there it is.  There’s the cough.  Fumbling for that handkerchief, body pitching forward involuntarily, he catches Newt ailing a little before wandering away.  He loses track of the zenobiologist as Herc helps him back up to standing.

Some white-coated waiter shows up, perfectly silent and as if on cue, with a fresh glass of water.  Herc takes it smoothly, and dismisses the guy.

“You good?” he asks softly.

Raleigh shakes his head, pulling himself back together.  “You wanted a shitshow.”

“Of course I did, and you’re doing great,” Herc says with a slight grin, and pats him on the shoulder.  “These things are insufferable.”

There’s a hell of a lot to say to that, except Raleigh doesn’t get the chance, because the jaeger’s docking now, and the first person who pops out of the conn-pod is very, very familiar.

+++++

Mako takes them up to the old LOCCENT battle cab, set out over the hangar floor.  The equipment in here has all been lovingly restored, probably for exhibition, but tonight, it’s set up as another VIP bar.  She’s changed out of her drivesuit since the demo, but the guy she was piloting with - another blond American - left his on.  Raleigh can’t help but notice the differences from what the old stuff was.  More lightly armored, less padding.  

Maybe Herc was right, he thinks for the first time.  Man wouldn’t survive a full-on beating from a kaijuu in something like that.  Maybe this is just about regional policing.  

About war against humans.

It’s unsettling.

Almost as unsettling as the hall they walked through immediately outside of LOCCENT where holograms of all the fallen pilots are displayed.  Where Yancy’s likeness is displayed.

Or maybe he’s just jealous.  Because no matter how different the conn-pod looks, how different the jaegers move, there was nothing like being in Gipsy.  Nothing at all.

“I was not intending to do the demonstration,” Mako says as she leads them over to a tall table, set up right on the glass, “But our Prime Minister insisted.”

“They upset about the role China’s got in all this?” Raleigh guesses.

She smiles.  “It is important to show the world we are all still friends.”  She gestures at that evening’s co-pilot.  “And I am very grateful to do it with old friends.”

“Old friends?” Raleigh asks.

“Captain Nate Lambert,” the other American says, holding out his hand.  “I’m headed to the first ‘Dome that’s standing up.  At least that’s what I’ve been promised.”  His eyes dart over to Mako.  “Right?”

She smiles a little.  “You did very well in Qualification.  Plus, you are one of our few new pilots who had any experience before.”

“Shame more of the old guard wasn’t interested,” Lambert says, and levels an appraising look at Raleigh.  

Raleigh starts to say something, but chokes on a cough, and reaches for his water instead.  Mako, bless her, answers for him. For them both.  

“We did our part.”

“Still.  The chance to get back in a jaeger.  I can’t imagine why anybody would pass that up,” Lambert continues.  “The program could really use your knowledge, I’d bet.”

“They’ve gotten more than enough use out of me,” Raleigh says, not sure where this is going but keeps his smile on, determined to keep this light.  And talk less.  Talking is definitely making him cough.  “And of course, they’ve got my co-pilot. Mako, you’re probably more up on everything anyway. I was out on the Wall for those last five years of the war.”

Mako tilts her head in recognition. Smiles at him. “You are too kind.”

“It’s the truth, Mako,” he says.

Lambert grins.  “Well, I don’t have a co-pilot right now, but I think I know what you mean.”  Another of those ubiquitous waiters comes over, a bottle of what looks like very good Ginjio sake and small glasses in hand.  Mako takes it with a nod.  “Mako and I make a pretty good team, don’t you think?”

Mako sighs, and pours them all a glass.  “It was a photo-op, Ranger Lambert.”

“I was wondering about that,” Raleigh says.  “We were looking at the new training applications.  Drift compatibility doesn’t seem as big of a focus.”

“No, it would not be.  Shen Industries has invented some new neural bridge that doesn’t require the same level of compatibility as before,” Mako says, eyes slightly unfocused.  “I found it... sterile.”

Lambert shrugs.  “Good news for me.  I was in the pipeline for the Class of 2024.  Almost made it through.  Got through just fine this time.  Compatibility trials are a thing of the past now though.  Cuts training time significantly.”

“So they let you in without a co-pilot?” Raleigh muses, surprised.  “Hell, back when we applied, you had to be pre-screened for that.”

“Oh, I had a co-pilot back then.  My, uhh,” and he glances over at Mako.

“Significant other?” Raleigh asks.  “Girlfriend?”

“Boyfriend,” Mako supplies. 

“Yeah, boyfriend,” Lambert replies, and leans back a bit in his chair.  “And damn was his dad pissed.  I, uhh, guess I was a few years old than him...”

“You were twenty-two.  He was sixteen,” Mako says gently.

“That wasn’t what the problem was, and you know it.  The problem was that he signed up at all...”

“That is not what...”

“Some people have fuckin’ stupid hang-ups,” Raleigh interrupts as politely as he can.  “I didn’t see you at the drift trials, back before Pitfall.”

“Naw, Jake took off on me about a year before that, give or take, and I, uhh, I transferred back to J-Tech.”  He shrugs.  “Then when they disbanded the PPDC, the Army recalled me.”

“And now you’re back?”  Raleigh asks, and Lambert shrugs.  “So did, uhh, Jake come back with you?”

“Jake hasn’t talked to either of us since the funeral,” Mako says sadly.

Something’s going on here, and Raleigh has no idea what it is.  But before he gets a chance to ask, Lambert gestures down at the main hangar floor.  “Hey, isn’t that Marshall Hansen?”

Raleigh half-stands to get a better look.

And yes, yes it is.

“Dammit Herc,” Raleigh mutters to himself, and grabbing his tux jacket, heads down.

+++++

Herc really hates these things.

It’s not the hand-shaking. It’s not the bullshit he has to spew. Or the forced smile, or the political answers, or most of the guest list for this particular event, or the fact that his brother fucking _died_ to prevent exactly this from happening.

No, no what he hates, what he really hates, are the journos.

So maybe he’s had one or two more drinks than he should have.

But really, what does anybody expect him to do when these vultures won’t leave him alone? When they’re after him all night, wondering about all manner of things that have nothing to do with them? Private family business, that’s what they’re after, but his family’s given enough to this damn war.

They have no right, no right at all.

“I don’t think I heard your question properly,” he replies shortly to this one arsehole from the BBC who has been after him all night. Here he is, trying to have a reasonable conversation with the first group of reasonable people - a few Australian representatives who share his concerns about this massive UN weapons program - and this arsehole just has to barge in. “It sounded like you asked if my son was in rehab. For drugs.”

“Yes sir, that is what I asked.”

“Why would you ask a question like that?”

The journo cunt puffs himself up. Oh, he’s been waiting for this. Savoring his anticipation of this very moment, now hasn’t he? “I have it on good authority from a number of sources that your son developed a heroin problem after Pitfall...”

And now, now this bloke has Herc’s full attention. “Who told you that?” he demands.

“Good authority,” the journo says, still puffed up with false bravado.

“My son never touched drugs,” Herc lies, as smoothly as he can, “and anybody who tells you that he did is a bald-faced liar.”

“It’s why he hasn’t rejoined the program, isn’t it? Medically disqualified?”

“Chuck is working on a doctorate in robotics.”

“I’ve seen no evidence of that. What I have seen evidence for is that he either got hooked on his painkillers during his recovery or starting using after he took that job with Shen Industries over in South America,” the journo says. “But either way, there are some really interesting stories floating aroun when you head out there. Like how he was possibly whor-“

Herc doesn’t let him finish that sentence.

What he does do is punch that smug motherfucker right in his smug mouth.

And keeps punching him, over and over, despite the best attempts of party security to get him off, because fuck them and fuck this party and fuck this entire fucking thing...

“Marshall, goddammit, stand down!”

He hears it, but too late to stop his fist, and instead of the journo, he catches Raleigh square in the chest.

Raleigh goes down, practically spasming with that cough.

“Oh shit,” he mutters, and pulls himself off the now-bloodied reporter, dazed and sprawled out on the freshly sealed concrete hangar floor. “Raleigh, you okay?”

Raleigh nods, trying to answer, but can’t stop coughing, and doubles over again.

Somebody all too familiar - Lambert, that idiot who’d been hooking up with Stacker Pentecost’s mostly-estranged son back in ’23 - touches him on the shoulder. “Marshall, maybe we should get you out of here.

Eh, he’s not that drunk.

Still, good excuse as any.

+++++

It’s surprisingly easy to get Herc back to the hotel.

Nobody gives them much grief on the way out, except for one reporter who manages to catch Raleigh right as Lambert’s helping him get Herc into their towncar.

“Ranger Becket, can I just get a quick statement on what happened tonight?”

Raleigh looks at the guy, and shuts Herc into the car. “When Chuck was twenty-one, he was asked to go die for a planet that had spent six years calling him a child soldier and accusing his dad of being an abusive asshole for letting him pilot in the first place. He’s the strongest man I know. You want to sit here and judge him? You don’t have the right.”

“Ranger Becket, what about your present medical condition...”

“Yeah, on that, you can fuck o-“ he begins, and collapses in a fresh coughing fit against the car door.

When he looks up again, the reporter is gone.

Thank god.

“Park Hyatt,” he tells the driver, as he pulls himself back into the car.

Herc, who’s somewhat pulled himself back together, gives him a fist bump. “Good work, son.”

“You’re drunk,” he tells his sort-of father-in-law.

“Just a bit,” Herc replies, and settles into the deep leather seat, a small smile on his face. “Just like the old days.”

Looking over at Raleigh from the other side of Herc, Lambert just shakes his head.

Herc falls asleep on the way back to the hotel, but wakes up enough for them to man-handle him back up into the suite and into his room. Raleigh isn’t exactly in the mood to tuck the big Australian in - seriously, what the fuck was tonight? - but he does do him the courtesy of removing his shoes, his jacket, and because it’s halfway unbuttoned anyway, his shirt.

Raleigh can’t remember the last time he saw Herc topless. If ever. Late forties that he is, he’s still in surprisingly good shape. But that freckled skin - uncomfortably similar to Chuck’s - is marred with two complete sets of burns. Lucky Seven, and Striker Eureka. He knows Striker’s from Chuck. But not even Chuck’s are this red and angry. Like they’re fresh.

It’s... 

“That what circuitry suit scars look like?” Lambert asks from behind him.

Raleigh sighs and runs a hand across his bare scalp. It’s itching. “You want a drink?” he asks with a yawn.

“I don’t know. Should you be drinking with that cough?”

“I’m not sick. Just inhaled some shit I shouldn’t have, burned up my throat pretty good,” Raleigh says, and checks the minibar. Freshly stocked. “Plus, my grandma always says whiskey was good for what ails you.”

“Your grandma sounds fun,” Lambert says, following him, and fishes himself out one of the little bottles of Grey Goose. “So, is that what it was like back in the day?”

“I think people remember Herc as the last Marshall, you know? But he’d say he’s just a sergeant.”

“I’m former Army,” Lambert says, holding up his hands in defense. “I have seen much worse than that.”

“Yance and me were Air Force. Yancy would have done it anyway, without the kaijuu,” Raleigh replies, “but sometimes I think I would have been happy doing carpentry work for the rest of my life.”

“Yeah, well,” Lambert says, and takes a sip straight from the bottle. “I hear all the old guard pilots have scars like that. They said they’d fix the suits so it doesn’t happen anymore.”

Grateful for the change of subject, Raleigh gets his whiskey, and nods. The shit burns, it does, but it seems to cut through the mucus build-up. 

“Seems like a shame. We always saw at as your jaeger taking ownership of you. Marking you, in a way.”

Lambert’s quiet for a moment, like he’s soaking that in, and then smiles at him. “I’d love to see it.”

It takes Raleigh a moment to catch on.

Oh.

Nice.

He smiles back.

“Can you take that thing off without a screwdriver?” 

Lambert shrugs. “This is for show. Zip up, circuitry connections only. My real suit’s still on order.”

“Herc does tend to sleep like the dead when he’s been drinking,” Raleigh offers.

“Awesome,” Lambert grins back.

+++++

When Raleigh wakes in the morning, it’s to a slight hang-over punctuated by the overlying grogginess of too many cough drops; to that tell-tale pleasant ache; to the lovely heat of another body pressed up against his.

But there’s also a banging. One that’s not in his head. 

One that will not go away.  
Raleigh only registers that he’s still naked when he’s opening the door. Sections of tuxedo and new-gen drivesuit (which really only seems to be the circuitry inner layers) are scattered across the floor. By then, of course, it’s too late.

Well, awesome.

It’s Herc.  Wearing one of those waffle-weave bathrobes, coffee cup in hand.

“You boys have a fun time last night?” is the first thing Herc asks, but his smile is bemused. 

“Oh, jesus, umm, Marshall....” Lambert, sitting up now with a dazed, half-asleep expression on his face, stammers.

Herc holds up a hand, and takes a sip of coffee.  Calm.  Still smiling.  “Too early in the morning for that bullshit.  Becket, answer the question.”

“He, uhh, we have an out of town policy?” Raleigh offers, slightly nervous.  Herc was _fucked_ up last night, and he’s acting perfectly fine.  It’s kind of adding to the scary factor.  “Cause he’s, uhh, at home with Yancy when I’m not?  And Yancy pulled all kinds of shit. Shit you would know about, I uhh, I think?”

“What shit is that?”

“Uhh, Scott and...”

“Ah yeah. Straight as anybody can be in the Corps,” Herc replies in that studiously happy voice. “And haven’t seen you in a while, Nate. We had a pool going as to when the Honolulu police were going to find your body. I was sure Stacker would have killed you.” He pauses - and yeah, he’s enjoying this, goddammit, Raleigh knows. “I would have killed you.”

Lambert stares.

Raleigh could die from embarrassment.

“Yeah, that’s, uhh, how do you know about...”

“Whatever. Look, boys, I’ve got a meeting with the Australian ambassador in about an hour. Apparently the Camberra cunts are upset about some of the things I was quoted as saying last night,” Herc says, and grins. “We’ll leave whenever I’m done with that. Should be a few hours if you boys fancy another go.”

And with that, Herc lets the door slam shut behind him.

For a very long, awkward moment, silence reigns in the room.

Yeah, dying would be right now.

But Lambert looks over at him.  “Umm... what the... sorry, uhh...”

“Yeah. He’s in rare form today.”

“No, I mean, uhh, Yancy?  Your brother?”

Oh right. Awesome. Great. Just the shit he needs right now. Raleigh rolls over on his back, eyes to the ceiling.  “You ought to be aware that when you drift with somebody long enough, barriers fall.  Like, all barriers. Maybe it’ll be better now that they’re changed the Pons system, but... it changes things.”

“No, I get that.  I just, uhh, thought he was dead.”

And while Raleigh’s more-than-slightly-hungover brain tries to come up with an answer to _that_ , his cell phone buzzes on the nightstand.

Chuck.

 _He better be hot_.

“Goddammit Herc,” he grumbles, and Lambert starts laughing again.

+++++

“Any news about Dad?”

Chuck swats at Yancy’s arse as he saunters into the kitchen. His seppo is busy with a couple pans of muffins but still grabs for his wrist and yanks him around. Letting himself be pulled into a quick kiss, Chuck smiles against Yancy’s mouth.

“Morning, lover,” Chuck says.

“You stink,” Yancy says, letting him go again.

Chuck just smiles wider. He knows what he looks like right now; workout shorts low around his hips and sweat plastering his shirt to his torso.  He doesn’t have quite the muscle that he did back in the day, but he keeps up with what he can. Feels good to _move_. “Stinky or not, you know you want a piece of this.”

Yancy chuckles _but doesn’t deny it_ , Chuck thinks smugly. “Good run?”

“Five miles, short circuit, whatever,” Chuck replies casually, and goes for the smaller fridge where they keep their own food. Where’s the orange juice? Raleigh is trying to get them to do that keto thing but giving up orange juice is a bridge too far, in Chuck’s opinion.  “How’d that shit go?”

Gesturing over at the family laptop, Yancy goes back to dishing out batter into the little papers.  “Looks like your dad punched a reporter who was asking about you.”

Chuck grins.  “Good ol’ Dad.”

“Like it’s the Twenty-Teen glory days all over again,” Yancy replies wrily. “Scott had so many stories about Herc...” 

“Yeah, my old man’s always hated journos,” Chuck says, and goes for the laptop. Yancy’s got it on one of those gossip rag sites, the ones that run all the celebrity rumors.  

And top of the page, when he hits refresh, is this shit.

_Raleigh Becket SICK in first public appearance in two years. Our medical experts examine the possibilities._

The pictures do not look good. They really don’t. There’s an especially bad one where Raleigh is bent halfway over on the ground, tux jacket off, Herc helping him up. Rals’ hair still hasn’t grown back in, and he’s leaner now than he used to be. Sure, it’s probably innocent - the paps always were good at spinning innocuous shit into dramatic gold - but it doesn’t look good. 

“What’s this shit with Raleigh? The fuck happened?”

One pan full, another two to go, pauses, scoop above the bowl, dripping batter. “I don’t know. Haven’t gotten the full details out of Herc. But I’m guessing this is what happens when you enlist Raleigh’s help with your little project and it explodes all over him,” Yancy replies mildly.

Chuck takes a second look at the photos. 

That had been a total accident. Wasn’t his fault. Wasn’t his fault the seals had broken; wasn’t his fault the seals were there in the first place. 

(Chuck wasn’t a biologist, hated chemistry, but he did know his jaegers and there had never been a system like that in any of the original machines. He wanted - _needed, definitely needed - to dissect that particular drive system component until it gave up its purpose. Didn’t mean he’d wanted Raleigh to get his hair ruined in the process.)_

_“Eh, whatever,” is what he says to Yancy now, scrolling through more stories. Apparently, somebody had asked his old man if he was in drug rehab somewhere. Somebody had leaked it that the great Chuck Hansen had developed quite the heroin problem after Pitfall. Good old Dad; over-protective to a fucking fault. “Ray’ll be fine. You see the shit they’re saying about me?”_

_“You could have gone.”_

_“And dealt with that bullshit? No thanks,” Chuck says, and grins at Yancy. “Any news from Dad?”_

_“Rals hooked up with somebody...”_

_“Was he hot?” Chuck asks. “I want pictures if he was hot. Deal’s only in place if he’s hot.”_

_“No, the deal is use condoms.”_

_“And hotness,” Chuck corrects, because yes, yes these are his terms._

_He can practically feel Yancy’s eye roll. “It’s one of the new jaeger pilots from what I gathered from your dad.”_

_“Then he’s hot. Unless they dropped the training requirements,” Chuck says, and pulls up their computer’s messaging app._

_Give Raleigh a hard time now. Figure out what that stupid fluid-filled node is later._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry about the length between updates.  Work is insane and has been and will continue to be.  Plus, I'm trying to get a little more professional, as it were, with dressmaking. Yay sewing. 
> 
> Did this work? I think this worked. IDK, let me know. 
> 
> I have a hard time with Nate Lambert. I'm sorry, but I thought that character was a complete zero on screen. I'm going to have to figure that guy out. Also, there is not a whole lot of backstory for him that I can find, so... all I have is that he has a military rank and he and Jake went into the program together. I also can't find anybody's age, so I'm guessing here. If anybody has more information than the Wiki or the novelization, please let me know.


	4. Chapter 4

_June 2029_

The bar their mutual contact had picked for this meet is perfect; out of the way, too grungy to attract a decent crowd but not so terrible that the cops would have the place under surveillance for other, more serious crimes.

Not that stealing from Oblivion Bay is a non-serious crime.

For the life of him, Jake can't figure out why he's gotten this particular request, why this bloke wants this particular component.  A tertiary node in the artificial synapse system.  Minor.  Unimportant.  Still, Shen's got a patent on it, one of the newly developed systems to patch the holes left from the old tech, and they're not available for purchase on the open market.

It’s probably some kind of intellectual property theft thing. Not that it matters. If the bloke’s good for the money - and if he ever shows up - he’ll get his part.

_In other news, Raleigh Becket, former Ranger and Drift partner of the PPDC’s Secretary General Mako Mori, is in his fifth week of treatment at the Pearl Harbor VA Hospital. No information has officially been released about his condition, but government sources have told CNN that his condition is rated as grave. Unconfirmed reports say that Ranger Becket may be suffering from some type of radiation poisoning associated with his 2025 descent into the Anteverse..._

“I would think that radiation poisoning would show up earlier than four years out, wouldn’t you?”

Jake starts a little. He’d been focused on the news report, and completely missed this bloke slipping into the booth across from him.

“Do I know you?” he asks defensively.

The bloke shrugs. He looks vaguely familiar; indeed, he rather puts Jake in mind of the old guard jaeger pilots he used to know - outwardly careless, with iron just behind his eyes.  But Jake can't place the face, and this bloke can't be a pilot.  Almost everyone except Herc and Mako are dead, and of the half-dozen or so others, all of them work for the PPDC.

(Of course, there's always Chuck and Raleigh.  But Chuck's rumored to be dead, and Raleigh's confirmed to be dying.  So who really knows?  Who really cares?  Not like he's getting back in the Corps himself anytime soon.  Or ever.)

“You came from Oblivion Bay, didn’t you”

Creepy. “How do you know that?”

“You smell like the hangar bays. Very distinct smell.” The bloke shrugs. 

Yeah, creepy. Creepy as fuck. Is this the way Chau normally does business? Jake’s not sure. He’s never really done anything like this before - not on this scale, anyway. There are no names here. Just this address, and the request, and a hell of a lot of money waiting to transfer into Jake’s bank account.

“And Chau sent you?”

The bloke shrugs again. It’s unnerving, somehow.

“Yeah, so what if you are my fence? How would I know you’re good for the money?”

"That's cute,” the bloke replies.  “Coming from a kid.”

"I'm not a kid,” Jake protests.

"Have you looked in a mirror lately?"

“Have you? You look like a homeless man.”

The bloke looks down at himself, at his scraggly clothes, and then grins. “How do I know some kid can pull my component out without killing it?

"Look, if you don't want what I’m selling...”

The bloke chuckles. “And now he’s trying to threaten me,” he says, and straightens a little, still smiling. “Let’s see how that works out.”

"I grew up in jaegers," Jake says, hoping that's enough detail, hoping he doesn’t sound too defensive, "and I work in the Oblivion Bay chopshop.  I’ve got your damn part, if you’ve got the...”

“Shut up,” the bloke says, cutting him off hard. “When can we pick up the item?”

"I got you directions to where I stashed it."

"Where you stashed it?"

"Yeah mate, where I stashed it."

Those steel blue eyes fix on his. “You took a very sensitive, very temperamental piece of equipment and _stashed_ it somewhere? In this beat up town?”

Well fuck him, Jake decides. Everything’s fine. This bloke just needs to calm down and figure that out. “Yeah mate. As soon as you transfer the money, you’ll get your part, safe and sound.” There. That was nicely done, wasn’t it?

The bloke doesn’t offer to pay him, though.

Instead, he kind of cocks his head. “Dear lord,” he mutters, “it’s retarded.”

“Excuse me?”

“First off,” the bloke says, very slowly and deliberately, as if explaining to a very stupid child, “you’ve got no idea if this location has been bugged, if I’m a cop, or if somebody else in here could be trailing you, so running your mouth about money isn’t really a good idea.”

What? “Come again, mate?”

“Two,” the bloke continues, “it’s highly unprofessional to agree to a meet and then act like this. Chau’s got your cash, which he will wire to you as soon as I tell him to.”

“You gave my money to him to hold for me?” Jake asks, somewhat incredulous. “That’s twent-“

“And third, this tough guy act is adorable but kind of pissing me off.” The bloke snorts and stands up.  "Fucking amateur hour here."

"Wait,” Jake says - because twenty grand is _walking away_ right now - “where you going?"

"To tell Chau that he hired the wrong guy for the job.  That his guy couldn't get it done."

"But I got your node for you!"

The look of derision on the bloke’s face could peel paint. 

He’s still walking away.

It takes a moment for Jake to register this fact. A moment that’s apparently long enough for the bloke to leave the establishment completely. And he scrambles out of his seat to get after this paycheck.

Why Hannibal Chau had contacted him in the first place, Jake's still not sure. No way the crazy Hong Kong tai-pan knows about the family connection, right? Sure, Jake’s got a few minor thefts on his record, but he can’t be the only person working at Oblivion Bay who’d be willing to liberate a few items here and there. Yet whether Chau was reaching out to the son of an old sometimes-ally intentionally or not, Jake’s grateful for the contact.  

The last few years have been difficult, to say the least.  Getting kicked out of the PPDC for insubordination - his old man had loved his military disciplinary proceedings - had virtually ensured his unemployability, even in a post-kaijuu world.  Jake had drifted around, working odd jobs, until he'd saved up enough money to buy himself a fake ID and make it back to the States. 

He'd always been fond of California, those summers when his mother had visitation ranking as his happiest growing up. Auntie Luna had been stationed out here too for a while. Good memories.  They were all gone now, of course, as was the rest of the family - except for Mako, but even her periodic attempts to contact him were both pitiful and condescending - and he figured, what the hell. 

Jake had figured that with his mechanic's skills, work would be easy to find.  But the California coast wasn't what it once was, remnants of the Wall and still-rotting skeletons of fallen kaijuu cutting broad swaths through once-beautiful towns and neighborhoods.  LA had been fading prior to the war; now, it was practically a third-world country, still technically US territory but long ago ceded.  It was lightly policed, thick with crime, and only in the gated sections of the city staffed with private security was there any semblance of law and order. 

Well, gated communities and Oblivion Bay.

The Bay was spun back up, right along with the rest of the PPDC.

It feels almost like home.

But the pay is shit. 

The pay is really shit.

And there is not a chance in hell that he’ll ever sign back up. He’s done with the PPDC. He’s done with the Corps. His drift partner, his boyfriend, is done with him. What’s left, after that’s gone? What does he have, really?

And now he’s even managed to fuck up this. 

Maybe.

“Hey!” he calls after the bloke, who’s strolling down the dirty sidewalk like he’s in Central fucking Park. “I don’t know if anybody’s ever told you this, but it’s quite rude to order something and then fail to take delivery!” 

The bloke keeps walking. There’s something definitely familiar about him, but Jake can’t place it. Doesn’t matter.

“We were having a nice conversation back there! I don’t take kindly to...”

And then the bloke turns a corner.

Jake cocks his head, and jogs to catch up, eager to talk his way back inot this thing.

Not that he gets the chance.

Because the second he turns that corner, the bloke grabs him by the collar with both hands and slams him into the alley wall, hard enough to knock the breath out of him.  

Jake reacts.  Out of instinct.  Just instinct. 

He takes a swing at the bloke.

What happens next, he’s not really sure.

There was a time in his life when sparring with Nate in the Kwoon was the highlight of his day. As a young teen, Jake had spent time in Hong Kong, Tokyo, Hawaii, everywhere his old man was stationed, learning to spar from him and Auntie Tam and the Gages and everyone else. He’d learned to fight from Herc and Scott, and later Chuck, who always, always went dirty in the ring, and were worse outside of it. And what Jake had learned from Herc - who apparently had spent a good deal of his pre-Chuck years in barfights - was that a real fight is over almost before it begins.

This bloke reminds him of Herc.

Mostly because Jake’s on the ground in a second without knowing what hit him, cheek dug into the filthy alley asphalt with a knee in his back, his arm cranked around into a joint-popping configuration, a knife under his chin, and he can’t bloody move.

“What is your problem?!” he demands, trying to wriggle free.

Mistake. His arm is wrenched tighter, and Jake can’t choke back the groan.

"Let me explain something to you," the bloke says in an almost bored tone, and wrenches his arm tighter.  "If you want to survive in this world you're sinking into, you need to be two of three things.  Reliable, intelligent, or a damn good fighter.  You aren't even one of those, little boy, so don't give me this bullshit."

"I'm twenty-fucking-one.  Chuck Hansen saved the world at..."

"Exactly.  Chuck Hansen saved the world.  What have you done lately," and Jake can feel the blade twist a little tighter into the space under his chin, just barely nicking the skin, "other than fuck up a simple order?"

Shit, _shit_.  Jake tries to think.  "We don't get jaegers in very often that still have that component intact.  Do you need it or not?  Could be another six months before I see another one... hey!"

“How’d you get this one?”

“An experimental one-man police model got knocked out in the Philippines. Fucking rebels blew a leg off, it got shipped back to the Bay. Core systems were fine. I pulled it out tor you this morning, sealed it up nice to prevent corrosion,” he explains, desperately trying to keep himself from squirming. “It’s bloody well what you ordered!”

“Yeah,I remember hearing about that little incident.”

“That was classified,” Jake says, confused. “The PPDC didn’t release it to the media.”

“Yeah, I know.” 

“What do you mean... hey!”

The bloke's dug his wallet out of his back pocket.  "Well, Jake... Weatherford, you'd better pray you did a good enough job salvaging it and that nobody’s stolen it from wherever your dumbass hid it,” he says, and both weight and knife evaporate. 

Jake drags himself to his feet, glaring at the bloke, who's standing there with his hands in his pocket and that smile still affixed to his face.  "You gonna give me that back?"

"Sure," the bloke replies, but makes absolutely no attempt to return it.

It's infuriating, because fake IDs aren’t cheap.  But Jake’s got blood trickling down his neck and the night's not getting any younger.

Whatever that arsehole thinks, Jake grew up in the war, and spent years alone in this junkyard of a city.  He knows what he's doing.

Fuck him. 

Still, it’s twenty thousand dollars.

“Shall I take you there now?” Jake asks sarcastically. “I can show it’s real, that’s it’s properly packed, that all your parameters have been met. Would you like that?”

“Yeah, sure,” the bloke says, and casually wipes his knife off. “Let’s do that.”

+++++

It's almost dawn by the time Yancy drags himself back to LAX's private terminal.  He’s tired and he’s cranky and his feet hurt. Chuck’s little obsession is really going to piss him off one of these days.

He walks pretty much right through the terminal, flashing his fake passport at the girl at the check-in desk, and straight out to the runway, right out to the waiting G4. The ramp furls out of the plane as he approaches, Herc poking his head out.

“You get what we came for?” his father in law asks, reaching out a hand.

“Yup,” Yancy says, and passes the case up, pausing for a moment before dragging himself up and into the plane. “I don’t know how many more of these Chuck needs to go through before he’s satisfied...”

“But you know he won’t stop until he is,” Herc finishes for him and helps him the rest of the way up. “So everything went okay?”

“Yeah, except Chau needs to screen his people better,” Yancy snorts, falling into one of the nice padded leather seats. “His dumbass contact at Oblivion Bay almost didn’t turn over the goods. Trying to be a little tough guy.”

He’s not exactly sure who Herc scammed this plane off of, but it’s been nice. All they need to do now is swing back through Oahu, pick up Rals and Chuck, and go home. On their time. Outside airport security lines, all that bullshit that might draw attention. Hell, Raleigh had specifically asked for complete anonymity at Pearl, but apparently doctor-patient confidentiality didn’t extend to Rangers.

Not that the news has any real information about his condition anyway.

Raleigh's cough hadn't gotten any better over time.  Hadn't gone away.  Then one morning, about six weeks ago, he'd started hacking up blood.

And of course, they don't have health insurance.

Herc had talked him into - ordered him - to check into the VA.  He'd borrowed the plane, loaded the family up, and flown them up to Hawaii.

Reactive airway disease, the doctors had said.  It’d taken them almost a month to rule out radiation poisoning, though, and only after Chuck got in the case doctor's face about it.  Not in time to clear up some of the press confusion, though, and there are still stories circulating about that.

Radiation from the Breach. Like that CNN shit on at the bar last night.

They’ve cleared Raleigh to go home at least, nothing more needed than a daily brochodilator.  They said he’d be fine with the altitude up in the mountains, but that he might have to cut back on aerobic exercise, just in case. 

Raleigh says he’s fine with all that, but Chuck, Chuck on the other hand, is a mess. He thinks it’s his fault that Raleigh got sick, and while that’s technically true, Yancy doesn’t think that this little research project of his is helping anything.

Chuck’s gotten absolutely obsessed with figuring out what the purpose of these nodes are, why the chemical composition of the synaptic fluid's been changed.  Even in the days of unshielded conn-pods, the synaptic fluid had been specifically designed to be non-toxic.  Too dangerous in combat, and a direct hazard to maintenance techs.

He hasn’t been able to get his hands on a full, complete, intact node yet, so Yancy talked to Herc and Herc talked to Hannibal Chau and as far as Yancy’s concerned, if it costs twenty grand to stop Chuck from all this self-flagellation, he’ll pay it. 

Goddamn. Yancy just wants to go home. Pretend none of this has happened. Live his life and be with his boys and not have to worry about anything more intense than maintaining the guesthouse or walking their dogs.

“Oh? What happened?” Herc asks, eyeing him in that way of his. Yeah, like he hasn’t figured it out for himself yet.

“I kicked his ass,” Yancy replies with a slight smile.

“If you’ve got his name, I’ll talk to Chau.”

“Sure.” Yancy tosses Herc the wallet he lifted out o the kid’s back pocket. “Could be fake, sure, but that’s him.”

"You took his wallet?"

"What can I say?  He pissed me off." Yancy stands back up, arching his back as he goes for the minifridge in the back of the plane.  The kid had some training and a few pounds on him; it hadn't been all that easy, putting him on the ground.  "Idiot kid,” he adds, digging out a water.

Herc's squinting at the driver's license.  "You doing okay there?"

"Slightly bruised up," Yancy admits, and pops the cap on the bottle.  "Kid knew what he was doing, or at least, he's had some training in the past."

"That's good to hear."

"Does it matter?"

"Yeah," Herc says, and chuckles.  "This is Stacker's boy."

+++++

“Yeah, Pentecost had a son," Chuck says, when Yancy asks him about it a few days later, after they’re home and life is returning to some kind of normalcy.  "A few years younger than me.  I don't remember him all that well.  I think his mum had primary custody back when Pentecost was at the Academy with Dad."

"Why did I not know about this?"

"Most people didn't know about Mako either," Chuck says with a shrug, and taps the node with a wrench.  "Pentecost kept those things close to the chest."

"What happened to him?"

"Far as I know, he was at the Academy, doin' well, then the Marshall shows up for a visit and he's gettin' kicked out.  Something about trying to one-up his old man by getting in one of the trainers by himself."

"He tried to pilot on his own?" Yancy asks, incredulous. But that boy he’d put in the gutter back in Los Angeles had been a little arrogant, a little too cocky. Maybe it fit. Still, that was a stupid thing to even attempt.

"I reckon Pentecost was a hard-arse with everyone."

Yancy thinks about the court-martial Raleigh was put through, and snorts.  "Can you at least promise me you'll wear some kind of PPE before you crack this bad boy open?"

"Oh, I have all kinds of precautions lined in," Chuck says, gesturing around his lab.  "A vacuum set up, vent hood, kaijuu grade protection suits, the kind that have internal air..."

"Kaijuu grade?"

"Yeah, the shit they used to clean up the bodies with."  His boyfriend pats an overlarge camera on the bench.  "The makeshift nitrogen chamber I've set up ought to at least slow down the oxidation issue, but just in case, I borrowed a high speed camera." 

Yancy rolls his eyes.  "I threatened Stacker Pentecost's kid with a deadly weapon so you could have some fun, didn't I?"

Chuck smiles at him - that smile that brings his dimples out - and kisses his cheek.  "You love me."

"I shouldn't," he says, and swats Chuck on the ass on his way out.

+++++

The only thing Herc asks of his boys is that they all actually show up for dinner on Sunday nights. Really, the only thing he asks them to do.

Show up to dinner, and show up to dinner on time.

Which is why he’s very relieved to actually hear Chuck’s voice in his kitchen - finally - as he’s toeing the back door open, sweeping snow and dogs away from his feet, a platter of grilled steak in hand. Yancy and Raleigh showed up about half an hour ago - always prompt, those two - but Herc hasn’t seen his son in almost a week. 

The boy really has been fucking _obsessed_ with that node.

"Even nitrogen doesn't stop this shit from breaking down,” Chuck is saying. “Slowed it down some, but it only got me five seconds."

"Good.  Then you can drop it before I waste another twenty grand and almost kill Stacker’s son, you know, the one we never knew about.”

"Mako would be sad.  Raleigh, make sure your brother knows that killing Jake would have made Mako very sad."

"Yancy, you shouldn't have almost killed Jake."

"Shut the fuck up, Rals."

Herc smiles a little to himself.

Sunday dinner at his little cabin had become a tradition in the last year or so.  Right around the time Raleigh first got that cough of his.  Yancy had been having trouble keeping up with both feeding the guests and nursing his brother, and Herc had offered to pick up some of the slack. He doesn’t consider himself much of a cook, but nobody gets through the military without learning how to operate a grill, and even in the dead of New Zealand’s winter, they have enough nice days to make that all work.

His place isn’t very big.  A thousand square feet or so, with a single big open room, a sleeping loft, and a bathroom that contained his much-insisted-upon freestanding copper tub.  Raleigh had done most of the work on the place, with Chuck stepping in for plumbing and electrical wiring; Chuck was rather proud of it. They all give him shit for the tub, but they aren’t in their late forties with twenty years of hard combat under their belts.

They’ll learn, those boys. They’ll learn. 

It’s exactly the place Herc always envisioned himself ending up, after he was done with the service. Maybe with Angie and a daughter in a law and some grandkids, but Angie passed a long time ago and Chuck came out a while ago, and everybody’s happy. Herc’s satisfied with that.

“Oi, I see you finally dug yourself out of the lab,” Herc says approvingly, bringing dinner into the kitchen, snow still clinging to his jeans and the pups running happy circles around his feet. The boys are hanging out on the sofa, beers in hand. The doctors told Raleigh to keep his alcohol intake down, but at least he can still drink sometimes. “Figure anything out?”

"I don't know,” Chuck sighs, sounding depressed, and Raleigh reaches over to squeeze his leg.  “Couldn't get a proper sample.  It breaks down into the same shit as always."  He sighs.  "I need better equipment."

"I can't steal you a professional chemistry lab," Yancy offers.

And doesn’t that sound lovely?

"You better not be stealing anything, Becket," Herc groans.

Yancy leans back in the sofa, Raleigh automatically falling into his shoulder. Herc’s not so proud that he can’t acknowledge that he’s jealous of them sometimes, the easy comfort they take in each other. He and Scott had been like that, once upon a time. Before everything went to shit. Not that Herc would ever take anything away from Chuck - because the Beckets are both lovers and family to his boy - but still. Herc misses having that for himself. “What's gotten up your ass today, Herc?"

"You boys push this too far, Shen Industries figures it out.  You get Shen Industries after, you have the PLA and by extension, the entire intelligence apparatus of the CCP is on us."

Raleigh shrugs.  "Does that matter?"

Yancy, on the other hand, has the decency to go a pale with realization. “They might still be mad about Tibet," he mutters. 

Herc waves his grilling tongs at him. “Exactly,” he says, and grabs a fork to check the potatoes in the oven. Nothing fancy here, but who doesn’t love potatoes?

"Hiding isn't normally your style, old man," Chuck snaps.  "Since when do you run from a fight?"

"Sent all of you off to die at least once," Herc says, below the counter. Potatoes are done.  "You'll forgive me if I don't want to relive that."

"Herc..."

"You've never been in a Chinese prison, have you, Yance?" he snaps back.

There’s a long, pointed silence and finally, Yancy sighs.  He looks old, worn-out. "No chemistry lab, Chuck."

"Dad..." Chuck whines.

"Honestly, Chuck,” Raleigh says, before Herc can tell his son to stop focusing on this as a way of avoiding his guilty conscious (which would honestly just come out as an unhelpful _shut the fuck up, son_ ). “I’m alive, cough’s under control with the medication, so how bad could that shit really be?"

“Exactly,” Herc says, satisfied. “So one of you heathens set the table, and let’s start eating before the food gets cold.”

+++++

Later that night, after the dishes have been cleaned up and the boys have taken the leftovers and the dogs and gone back home, Herc settles in with a fresh beer and his laptop. Checking email. He still gets email.

Usually, it’s harmless. 

Tonight, though, he’s got an email from Hermann.

_Herc,_

_I heard about Raleigh’s condition, and trust he is getting the medical care he needs._

_I thought I should let you know that I received a rather odd email from Newt on the subject this week, after the last round of news reports. He asked some very pointed questions about the radiation signatures, and wanted to know if I could provide him with any further information. I also have it on good authority, through PPDC channels, that both the VA and DoD medical networks have been the subject of relentless hacking attempts in the past week as well._

_Whatever Raleigh is afflicted with, it appears that Shen Industries is looking for more information._

_I have attached his email and additional pertinent information for reference, if you are curious._

_Regards,  
Hermann_

“Huh,” Herc says, and starts sorting through the documents.

Why on Earth would that washed-up sell-out Newton Geiszler give a damn about Raleigh’s health?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I sincerely do apologize for the length between updates here. I'm going to finish this, but it may take me a while! My life has gotten completely insane.


End file.
